saul do you have the actual times? Points is not real useful I mean what if the foils are just 1 second ahead of the tube kites? Or what if the foils are 30 minutes head of the foils? No way of telling from just the point totals, that just tells you who won. Remember the original question is not "who is faster foils or tubes" we all know it's foils but by exactly how much is the foil faster?

edt wrote:saul do you have the actual times? Points is not real useful I mean what if the foils are just 1 second ahead of the tube kites? Or what if the foils are 30 minutes head of the foils? No way of telling from just the point totals, that just tells you who won. Remember the original question is not "who is faster foils or tubes" we all know it's foils but by exactly how much is the foil faster?

I don't know any of the times, but the foils were always WAY ahead. I was usually only about 2/3 of the way to the first mark by the time the foils were already past it.

edt wrote:saul do you have the actual times? Points is not real useful I mean what if the foils are just 1 second ahead of the tube kites? Or what if the foils are 30 minutes head of the foils? No way of telling from just the point totals, that just tells you who won. Remember the original question is not "who is faster foils or tubes" we all know it's foils but by exactly how much is the foil faster?

I don't know any of the times, but the foils were always WAY ahead. I was usually only about 2/3 of the way to the first mark by the time the foils were already past it.

The windier it is, the less the difference. Since the original question was about over 20 kts, from my experience the difference in VMG is small, but even a small difference in VMG makes a big difference on overall finish

Had a 2 day hydrofoil regatta where I was racing against a guy that I'm always racing pretty close with at other regattas. First day he was on 9m Elf and I was on 8m Edge in I'd say around 18 kts (my 9m sonic was out of tune and I got to the race late, no time to mess with it). We were neck and neck all day.

Second day was a little less wind, he was on 11m elf, I was on 11m sonic. I was winning the races by close to a half a leg on a 2 lap windward leeward course, so that's about 10% faster (12.5% on distance, but 10% faster on time since downwind you are faster).

That lines up very closely from what I've heard the top racers say, 10% faster around the course on a foil kite.

Hard to tell from just results because the faster, more experienced racers are more likely to have foil kites, so the advantage seems more.

Performance is going to rely heavily on the pilot. A good rider will get the most out of a kite regardless of type. You can put the best race foil in the world into the hand of someone with no foil experience and the performance may be lack luster because the rider doesn't have the skill set required to take full advantage of the kite's abilities. But an experienced rider can get the full performance out of a given kite and make it do amazing things. This goes for any kite though. An expert rider on an LEI may hold their own or smoke a intermediate or beginner on a high performance foil. davesails is right, the windier it is, the less advantage a high AR foil has. Not just over LEIs but lower AR foils as well. We've compared the HI Ar kites to much lower, grunty non-race types and in high winds, it really comes down to the pilot. However in low winds, nothing can compete with the race foils. At least from what we've seen.